Earth Day

Check out your local Sea Grant program and get involved!

NOAA Sea Grant celebrates Earth Day by sharing scientific knowledge and the wonders of our ocean, coastal, and Great Lakes environments with our citizens. Be it through the citizen monitoring programs that span from Maine to Alaska or working with students who compete in the Ocean Science Bowls across the country, Sea Grant programs are promoting environmental literacy in their communities and preparing the next generations of the scientific workforce.

Sea Grant uses a three tiered approach of research, education, and outreach. Our programs unique affiliation with research universities allow us access to new, relevant research, and our extension agents, education specialists and communicators make that research available and understandable to those in their communities who need it.

Texas Sea Grant’s Red Tide Rangers, including Leslie Sweeten (pictured), collect water samples on the south Texas coast and screen them for Karenia brevis, the toxic algae that causes a red tide bloom. Since the 1990s, these volunteer citizen scientists have provided state and federal authorities with valuable real-time data needed to manage public health and safety and contributed to NOAA’s efforts to forecast red tide. Links to more information: http://texas-sea-grant.tamu.edu/OurPrograms/RedTideRangers.html. Credit: Seth Patterson

A young visitor notes the difference between plastic debris that floats and plastic debris that sinks at the Louisiana Sea Grant table in the “Kids Area” at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. With the help of LSG staff and volunteers, children and their adult chaperones learned about the prevalence of plastics in the ocean, played a game to guess how long it takes for different types of debris to break down in the marine environment, and recycled Mardi Gras beads and trash into works of art. Credit: Darcy Wilkins

Wisconsin Sea Grant works alongside Will Allen, a food security pioneer with sustainable urban farms in Milwaukee and Chicago where fish and salad greens are grown together. Link for more information: bit.ly/1dPumiH. Credit: Narayan Mahon